First Run nabs Mettler’s ‘End of Time’

Docu explores concept of time

TORONTO — First Run Features has scooped U.S. rights to Swiss-Canadian director and cinematographer Peter Mettler’s “The End of Time,” a docu exploring the concept of time, it was announced Thursday.

The deal for the National Film Board of Canada production was negotiated by Christina Rogers for the NFB and First Run VP Marc Mauceri at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, where the pic received its international preem in the Masters program.

The NFB also sold Australian rights to Palace Films, while the film’s producer Cornelia Seitler of Maximage handled the sale of “End” to Poland’s Against Gravity.

Switzerland’s Look Now! will release the film next month, and Mongrel Media will release the film in Canada in December.

“The End of Time,” which recently won the Premio Qualita Di Vita Award for best environmental film in Locarno, was produced by Seitler and Brigitte Hofer for Maximage, Ingrid Veninger for Punk Films and the NFB’s Gerry Flahive. Mettler and the NFB’s Silva Basmajian were exec producers.

Moving from a particle accelerator in Switzerland to lava flows in Hawaii to inner city Detroit to a Hindi funeral rite in India, “End” is the third film in Mettler’s trilogy that includes “Picture of Light (1996) and “Gambling, Gods & LSD” (2002).